July 2010

July 30, 2010

To paraphrase WH Auden, I have stopped the clocks and cut off the email, and we are on holiday at home. And I am enjoying cultivating time in a different way for a little while, happily doing things I've been wanting to do for ages.

Like going to the theatre. Tom and I went to see All My Sons and found it just as brilliant as the critics said. When we found our seats Tom surveyed the scene and remarked, 'it's all very old'. I thought he meant the beautiful,1901 theatre but no, he was talking about the audience. And it was true, it was a Wednesday matinee performance, so there were plenty of grey heads. As someone who has just realised she is going grey (I did some photobooth photos last week and the evidence was there - much to my suprise), I felt quite at home.

Simon and I saw Tap Dogs a couple of days later. The critics are pretty sniffy about this, but the big, male, booted tappers exude infectious rhythm and energy, and I'm sure they have to screw the seats back into the floor after every performance, as everyone seems to nod and bounce in time. We'd seen the show a few years ago, but without Adam Garcia - I cannot deny that he is a very good reason to watch it all over again...

A pretty train journey through stations that should have milk churns on the platforms and prize-winning roses by white-washed fences was a much better way to reach Oxford than by car. (And who would ever have guessed that Slough station buffet serves good a good pain au chocolat and decent cup of tea - I'd always thought of it as something out of the 1940s or on a par with Carnforth station buffet in BriefEncounter). This was for a Sunday stroll round the Ashmolean Museum to see the new extension and the wonderful collection of art (relatively small but brilliantly selected, with a couple of my favourite Holman Hunt paintings). And I can confirm that the home-baked cakes and biscuits are worth the detour to the cafe.

The main reason for visiting, though, was to see the Howard Hodgkin exhibition at Modern Art Oxford . I've wanted to own a HH for years (Simon is still struggling to 'understand' this, as he says) and while I might not go as far as this assessment, it was wonderful to get a huge blast of incredible colour, even though I feel some of the works were just a little underpainted.

Holidays, even those at home, also mean books and the chance to choose from the pile that has been accumulating. The Hare with Amber Eyes is an intriguing read - one of the very few books that considers the sense of touch - and it's beautifully written. It's part family history, part world history: the world history story shocks, the family history makes me want to read Proust.

Still with rich families, I'm re-reading Nancy Mitford. I've never been a committed Mitford fan but a novel or two now and again is about right. The Pursuit of Love was much sadder than I'd remembered, but Uncle Matthew is still as terrifying as ever and the first part of the book will never lose its clarity, sharpness and marvellous style. I'm following that with Love in a Cold Climate - and depsite the fact that it's warm outside, it makes me feel just as chilly as Linda in Alconleigh.

[butterfly garden]

And still with rich families, I've just been to Waltham Place to see the organic, biodynamic gardens which are filled with perennials, grasses, and masses of self-seeded plants all mixed up together, and butterflies and insects flitting and buzzing everywhere. None of it is tidy, controlled or fussy, and it's a delight to see real gardening, the type that happens often quite naturally when gardeners are relaxed and in tune with a place, on this sort of scale. (The posy of sweet peas above is from the shop there.)

And the holiday goes on for a while longer; there's lots more cultivating of time to do before I return to work.

July 28, 2010

So this is my Hemlock Cushion, as in Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, because the colours remind me of something vaguely poisonous that might put me to sleep. While I was crocheting, it made me think of plants such as deadly nightshade, foxglove and bleeding heart, and I felt as though I was deep in 'verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways', surrounded by 'fast-fading violets' and 'musk-roses', and enveloped in 'beechen green' shadows. (At least I'd have something to lay my head on as I fell into a 'drowsy numbness'.)

It's a wonderfully easy pattern that builds up in mesmerising concentric circles; I used two rows per colour and it's amazing the effects that the colours have when you look at them up close and then at a distance - not unlike Kaa's eyes in The Jungle Book film.

The two sides have the same yarns but different sequences to add interest for me as I make them, and although I used the Erika Knight pattern in Essential Crochet I adpated it to Biggan Design DK weight yarn (see below for links) and put a scalloped edging round the outside. It covers an 18" cushion pad from here (the joy of crocheting round covers is that you can stop when you like and cover any size pad you have available.)

July 26, 2010

It was a little while before I saw that the crochet I had started matched the book I began reading around the same time. And that the mood of both matched, too. It wasn't intentional, but I am beginning to think that one influenced the other (in the same way that the crochet and book in the previous post shared the same bright tones and underlying optimism).

I find that Penelope Lively is an author I know I ought to like but somehow don't get on with. Years ago, I read Oleander, Jacaranda (which gets my vote for one of the best titles ever), and more recently I read Family Album. Picking up Treasures of Time was like doing a double-take as I could have sworn from the outset that it was just like Family Album, and populated with the same cast of morose/self-centred/intellectual-menage-a-trois-characters who, I have to confess, made me feel just as unsettled and miserable.

The crochet was meant to be an exercise in slightly 'off colour' shades, but in fact may have turned out simply off colour. I like these oddball hues, the kind that might be called 'Deadly Nightshade' or 'Poison Ivy' on a paint chart, or grow happily in the brilliantly strange-sounding Poison Garden at Alnwick Castle. But together they seem to make a pretty toxic mix, like the characters in PL's novels.

Or maybe I should just change my reading and see the colours as an adventure, a journey into some new territory, like the Wallpaper* City Guides with their fantastic Pantone-style range of covers. (They are really useful little books that complement fuller city guides, and I rely on them to tell me where the best 20th century architecture can be found.)

July 15, 2010

It's a miracle that this much made it into the jars. Lemon curd, using the easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy recipe in How to Eat (it's the one in the book, not the one on the website) and made, daringly, in a saucepan without a bain-marie. It's so delicious that it's hard not to eat it straight from the saucepan while still warm, never mind directly from the jar once it's cooled. It's like condensed milk - always best from the fridge in the jar or tin.

One jar will be used to fill a cake, and the other will take its chances in the fridge. I don't see it being there for long before it disappears mysteriously.

July 13, 2010

My sewing machine has been gathering dust for a while now, and I had to give it a clean before taking it for a day out at the Papered Parlour at the weekend. The PP has a beautifully designed website, great teaching space, excellent tutors, and offers tea and home-made cake on vintage china. It's also in an excellent location; Clapham is where I wanted to live when I was in my twenties (but Simon wasn't and isn't a city boy), and it's still as buzzy as ever.

After twelve months away from fabric and my machine, I decided it was time to play with both again. I'd read about the PP here and about Cassandra Ellis here and felt that a workshop was a good way to get back to quilting. Cassandra makes stunning quilts with all sorts of fabrics and has developed a very personal style and approach which I identify with - she's a great tutor who dispenses practical, sensible advice about quilting. She got every single person making lovely blocks - even those who had never handled a rotary cutter or sewing machine before. It was all nicely structured, but also refreshingly freestyle.

I took a vintage hand-embroidered tablecloth as my starter/meaningful fabric and put sections of it in the centre of the two blocks I made. It's hard to cut into something like this, but my philosophy is that it's better in a quilt than in a cupboard. And worth dusting down my machine for.

July 12, 2010

Not so much round and round the garden as round and round in the garden. It's been far too hot to move much in the garden, so instead I have been sitting in the shade going round in crocheted circles. This is gentle therapy and relaxation, and an opportunity to play with Biggan Design yarns which come in so many beautiful colours. I bought lots of single balls for various projects and find that crochet is the ideal excuse to experiment with a pile of lovely colours. Even when a colour doesn't work, it's easy to unravel and start again - much easier than the faff of undoing knitting. It's also really fast - this is the result of a Saturday afternoon in the sunshine.

I love round cushions, especially when they have vintage/vintage-style knitted or crocheted covers. This is my treat - making something purely for fun and not for a book - and I found that going round in circles is anything but hellish on a sunny day. I'm using the pattern in Essential Crochet by Erika Knight, but with DK yarn and a 4mm hook. I'll just keep going until it fits a 16" cushion pad, and then I'll make a second side with the same colours but a different yarn sequence.

July 09, 2010

The third CD in the super-cheap trio I bought (together with Tapestry and Mud Slide Slim) is the one that has had the most profound effect this week. A friend of my Mum's (therefore by definition old, past it, and lacking any taste in music) gave me a copy of A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night around the time it came out. I remember thinking he'd got the wrong person; which fourteen year old wants to listen to 'For Me and My Gal' and 'You Made Me Love You' with a swelling orchestra in the background?

I don't know whether I ever thanked him properly and graciously for the album, but I should have done. It became one of my most beloved LPs, but it was the one I didn't tell my friends about. I absolutely loved the arrangements (all very cinematic, and the kind of thing you'd get in great musicals or with Frank Sinatra), the funny and clever lyrics and, above all, Harry Nilsson's bittersweet, gentle, wry voice. It's quite beautiful, delightfully old-fashioned - and timeless. All these years later I'm listening to it again (I stopped when we threw out the record player and all our vinyl records - I know, I know, I'm regretting this just like the many thousands or even millions of other people who did exactly the same) and I can still recall all the soaring strings, the tremulous trills, the little jokes, and the seamless movements. This is the record that introduced me to phrase 'makin' whoopee', the concept of very, very slow ragtime, and the pure joy that classic songs can bring.

Needlepoint

I have found what may be a solution to the problem of liking needlepoint but not liking tiny, time-consuming needlepoint (ie worked with fine strands of wool on canvas with a high number of holes per inch). It is canvas with a low number of holes per inch - and I have discovered that you can go low if you want - and very thick carpet/rug wool which isn't pre-cut into strands for rug-making. Together with a very, very large needle and a teenager who is willing to stitch samples, and the results so far are great. You can see the scale of the big canvas and big wool with my big feet.

July 05, 2010

According to some people around here, I am the only person in the world still buying CDs. This may be very true, but it doesn't worry me. I've tried listening to music through things stuck in my ears and I don't like it. Nor do I like the way it makes me feel plugged in; I'd much rather have sounds surrounding me and filling the space and vibrating in the air, not just my ear. Plus, CDs are so ridiculously cheap, it's seem mad not to take advantage of them.

I saw the Carole King/James Taylor Live at The Troubador concert on TV and was amazed at how good they sounded. I knew every single nuance of every single James Taylor song when I was a teenager, but I had no idea he had such a dry wit. And, of course, I spent hours listening to Tapestry, to such an extent that when I first put my new CD on in the car this weekend, I was suprised to find I still know all the words. The Latin, the Russian, the chemical equations and the dates in history have all sunk without a trace, but the lyrics of Carole King still come bobbing up to the surface after all these years. And mine wasn't even a misspent youth.

How I loved this album, and how delighted I am to find I still like it. Yet it's amazing what passes youth by, even when they spend night after night gazing at the LP cover. I had never noticed until now that Carole King is holding a tapestry in her hand in the photo. The whole thing is stitched together beautifully, and yet I missed the real needlework.

This discovery of CK's tapestry/Tapestry is timely. I'm not far off finishing my book now and I can feel my mind wandering even while I knit and type to a deadline. It's wondering what to do next, and the thought of a little tapestry or needlepoint is very appealing. I once did some Kaffe Fassett needlepoint and even began one of the huge Elian McCready pansy panels, but then I got pregnant and couldn't sit up straight for too long, and only one corner was ever finished. But now, as with rediscovering Tapestry with greater clarity, I see that if I ever want to get it finished, I need to adopt a different, more personal, more doable approach to tapestry.

I have ideas and plans, and I can't wait t0 get started. Old-fashioned stitching and music do me just fine.

*******

The needlepoints above are recent finds, collected for ideas and inspiration. The two lower ones are close-ups of flowers which take on an interesting abstract quality but would, I think, be very confusing to stitch. If I did want to stitch a ready-made canvas, I would definitely choose one of the amazing Charley Harper designs from Purl Soho.

July 03, 2010

I thought I'm messed up my basil planting this year. I sowed the seeds indoors in pots just as the weather turned horrible and cold. I wasn't sure they would survive, but they seem to be making up for lost time now. The fabulous weather is ensuring I have a whole windowsill of pots of basil (oh goodness, I'm feeling badly behaved again at the thought of my appalling giggles in an A Level English lesson when discussing Keats' Isabella and the Pot of Basil - but there are no heads in my pots).

I have written before about my unorthodox way of growing basil: I sow the seeds thickly on the surface of the compost, cover with clingfilm until first signs of germination, keep the pots on a sunny windowsill, and water well from below. And that is it. I don't thin out the seedlings and I never plant my basil out outside (there are too many creepy crawlies that like basil). This strategy works every time. And now we can make pesto.